The Moving Finger Part 23

Rochester rose to his feet. Saton had just entered, closing the door behind him. Prepared for Rochester's presence by the servants, he greeted him calmly enough.

"This is an unexpected honor," he said, bowing. "I did not imagine that we should meet again so soon."

"Nor I," Rochester answered. "Where can we talk?"

"Here as well as anywhere," Saton answered, going up to Rachael, and lifting her hand for a moment to his lips. "From this lady, whose acquaintance I presume you have made, I have no secrets."

Rochester glanced from one to the other--the woman, sitting erect and severe in her chair, the young man bending affectionately over her.

Yes, he was right! There was something about the two hard to explain, yet apparent to him as he sat there, which seemed in some way to remove them out of direct kinship with the ordinary people of the world. Was it, he wondered, with a sudden swift intuition, a touch of insularity, a sign of narrowness, that he should find himself so utterly repelled by this foreign note in their temperaments? Was his disapproval, after all, but a mark of sn.o.bbishness, the sn.o.bbishness which, to use a mundane parallel, takes objection to the shape of an unfashionable collar, or the cut of a country-made coat? There were other races upon the world beside the race of aristocrats. There was an aristocracy of brains, of genius, of character. Yet he reasoned against his inspiration. Nothing could make him believe that the boy who had held out his hands so eagerly toward the fire of life, had not ended by gathering to himself experiences and a cult of living from which any ordinary mortal would have shrunk.

"I am quite content," Rochester said, "to say what I have to say before this lady, especially if she knows your history. I have come here to tell you this. I have been your sponsor, perhaps your unwilling sponsor, into the society and to the friends amongst whom you spend your time. I am not satisfied with my sponsorship. That you came of humble parentage, although you never allude to the fact, goes for nothing. That you may be forgiven. But there are seven years of your past the knowledge of which is a pledge to me. I have come to insist upon your fulfilment of it. For seven years you disappeared.

Where were you? How did you blossom into prosperity? How is it that you, the professor of a new cult, whose first work is as yet unpublished, find yourself enabled to live in luxury like this? You had no G.o.dmother then. Who is this lady? Why do you call her your G.o.dmother? She is nothing of the sort. You and I know that--you and I and she. There are things about you, Saton, which I find it hard to understand. I want to understand them for the sake of my friends."

"And if you do not?" Saton asked calmly.

"Well, it must be open war," Rochester declared.

"I should say that it amounted to that now," Saton answered.

"Scarcely," Rochester declared, "for if it had been open war I should have asked you before now to tell me where it was that you and Lord Guerdon had met. Remember I heard the words trembling upon his lips, and I saw your face!"

Saton did not move, nor did he speak for a moment. His cheeks were a little pale, but he gave no sign of being moved. The woman's face was like the face of a sphinx, withered and emotionless. Her eyes were fixed upon Saton's.

"You have spoken to me before somewhat in this strain, sir," Saton said. "What I said to you then, I repeat. The account between us is ruled out. You lent or gave me a sum of money, and I returned it. As to grat.i.tude," he went on, "that I may or may not feel. I leave you to judge. You can ask yourself, if you will, whether that action of yours came from an impulse of generosity, or was merely the gratification of a cynical whim."

"My motives are beside the question," Rochester answered. "Do I understand that you decline to give me any account of yourself?"

"I see no reason," Saton said coldly, "why I should gratify your curiosity."

"There is no reason," Rochester admitted. "It is simply a matter of policy. Frankly, I mistrust you. There are points about your behaviour, ever since in a foolish moment I asked you to stay at Beauleys, which I do not understand. I do not understand Lord Guerdon's sudden recognition of you, and even suddener death. I do not understand why it has amused you to fill the head of my young ward, Lois Champneyes, with foolish thoughts. I do not understand why you should stand between my wife and the writers of a blackmailing letter.

I do not ask you for any explanation. I simply tell you that these things present themselves as enigmas to me. You have declared your position. I declare mine. What you will not tell me I shall make it my business to discover."

The Comtesse leaned a little forward. Her face was still unchanged, her tone scornful.

"It is I who will answer you," she said. "My adopted son--for he is my adopted son if I choose to make him so--will explain nothing. He has, in fact, nothing more to say to you. You and he are quits so far as regards obligations. Your paths in life lie apart. You are one of the self-centred, sedentary loiterers by the way. For him," she added, throwing out suddenly her brown, withered hand, aflame with jewels, "there lie different things. Something he knows; something he has learned; much there is yet for him to learn. He will go on his way, undisturbed by you or any friends of yours. As for his means, your question is an impertinence. Ask at Rothschilds concerning the Comtesse de Vestignes, and remember that what belongs to me belongs to him. Measure your wits against his, to-day, to-morrow, or any time you choose, and the end is certain. Show your patron out, Bertrand. He has amused me for a little time, but I am tired."

Rochester rose to his feet.

"Madam," he said, "I am sorry to have fatigued you. For the rest," he added, with a note of irony in his tone, "I suppose I must accept your challenge. I feel that I am measuring myself and my poor powers against all sorts of nameless gifts. And yet," he added, as he followed Saton towards the door, "the world goes round, and the things which happened yesterday repeat themselves to-morrow. Your new science should teach you, at least, not to gamble against certainties."

He pa.s.sed out of the room, and Saton returned slowly to where Rachael was sitting. Her eyes sought his inquiringly. They read the anguish in his face.

"You are afraid," she muttered.

"I am afraid," he admitted. "Given an inversion of their relative positions, I feel like Faust befriended by Mephistopheles. I felt it when he stood by my side on the hilltop, seven years ago. I felt it when he thrust that money into my hand, and bade me go and see what I could make of life, bade me go, without a word of kindness, without a touch of his fingers, without a sentence of encouragement, with no admonitory words save that one single diatribe against failure. You know what he told me? 'Go out,' he said,'and try your luck. Go out along the road which your eyes have watched fading into the mists. But remember this. For men there is no such thing as failure. One may swim too far out to sea on a sunny day. One may trifle with a loaded revolver, or drink in one's sleep the draught from which one does not awake. But for men, there is no failure.'"

The woman nodded.

"Well," she said harshly, "you remembered that. You did not fail. Who dares to say that you have failed!"

Saton threw himself into the easy-chair drawn apart from hers. His head fell forward into his hands. The woman rested her head upon her fingers, and watched him through the shadows.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT NAUDHEIM

Naudheim had finished his address, and stood talking with his host.

"Do you mind," Saton asked, "if I introduce some of these people to you? You know many of them by name."

Naudheim shook his head. He was a tall man, with gray, unkempt hair, and long, wizened face. He wore a black suit of clothes, of ancient cut, and a stock which had literally belonged to his grandfather.

"No!" he said vigorously. "I will be introduced to no one. Why should I? I have spoken to them of the things which make life for us. I have told them my thoughts. What need is there of introduction? I shake hands with no one. I leave that, and silly speeches, and banquets, to my enemies, the professors. These are not my ways."

"It shall be as you wish, of course," Saton replied. "You are very fortunate to be able to live and work alone. Here we have to adapt ourself in some way to the customs of the people with whom we are forced to come into daily contact."

Naudheim suddenly abandoned that far-away look of his, his habit of seeing through the person with whom he was talking. He looked into Saton's face steadily, almost fiercely.

"Young man," he said, "you talk like a fool. Now listen to me. These are my parting words! There is stuff in you. You know a little. You could be taught much more. And above all, you have the temperament.

Temperament is a wonderful thing," he added. "And yet, with all these gifts, you make me feel as though I would like to take you by the collar and lift you up in my arms--yes, I am strong though I am thin--and throw you out of that window, and see you lie there, because you are a fool!"

"Go on," Saton said, his face growing a little pale.

"Oh, you know it!" Naudheim declared. "You feel it in your blood. You know it in your heart. You truckle to these people, you play at living their life, and you forget, if ever you knew, that our great mistress has never yet opened her arms save to those who have sought her single-hearted and with a single purpose. You are a dallier, philanderer. You will end your days wearing your fashionable clothes.

They may make you a professor here. You will talk learnedly. You will write a book. And when you die, people will say a great man has gone.

Listen! You listen to me now with only half your ears, but listen once more. The time may come. The light may burn in your heart, the truth may fill your soul. Then come to me. Come to me, young man, and I will make bone and sinew of your flabby limbs. I will take you in my hands and I will teach you the way to the stars."

Silently, and without a glance on either side of him, Naudheim left the room, amidst a silence which was almost an instinctive thing--the realization, perhaps, of the strange nature of this man, who from a stern sense of duty had left his hermit's life for a few days, to speak with his fellow-workers.

It had been in some respects a very curious function, this. It was neither meeting nor reception. There was neither host nor hostess, except that Saton had shaken hands with a few, and from his place by the side of Naudheim had indicated the turn of those who wished to speak. Their visitor's peculiarities were well-known to all of them.

He had left them abruptly, not from any sense of discourtesy, but because he had not the slightest idea of, or sympathy with, the manners of civilized people. He had given them something to think about. He had no desire to hear their criticisms. After he had gone, the doors were held open. There was no one to bid them stay, and so they went, in little groups of twos and threes, a curious, heterogeneous crowd, with the stamp upon their features or clothes or bearing, which somehow or other is always found upon those who are seekers for new things. Sallow, dissatisfied-looking men; women whose faces spoke, many of them, of a joyless life; people of overtrained minds; and here and there a strong, zealous, brilliant student of the last of the sciences left for solution.

Pauline would have gone with the others, but Saton touched her hand.

Half unwillingly she lingered behind until they were alone in the darkened room. He went to the window and threw it wide open. The scent of the flowers in the window-boxes and a little wave of the soft west wind came stealing in. She threw her head back with an exclamation of relief.

"Ah!" she said. "This is good."

"You found the room close?" he asked.

Pauline sank into the window-seat. She rested her delicate oval face upon her fingers, and looked away toward the deep green foliage of the trees outside.

"I did not notice it," she said, "and yet, somehow or other the whole atmosphere seemed stifling. Naudheim is great," she went on. "Oh, he is a great man, of course. He said wonderful things in a convincing way. He made one gasp."

"This afternoon," Saton declared slowly, "marks an epoch. What Naudheim said was remarkable because of what he left unsaid. Couldn't you feel that? Didn't you understand? If that man had ambitions, he could startle even this matter-of-fact world of ours. He could shake it to its very base."